Kat McPhee made a brief guest cameo on Ugly Betty last night. I like American Ferrera and she does a great job on this show. As far as I'm concerned she's the only thing this show has going for it. I watched about six episodes early in the season and it began to bore me. But my girlfriend Gracie Allen still watches it. Here's the clip (at least until it gets pulled):

Who'd have thought it?

Chris Daughtry takes a backstep to go from number one to number three. Taylor Hicks jumps off the cliff and does a free fall to number 66. And The Pickle? The Pickle does the Albemarle slide down to from 51 down to 56. Which means that even sixth place finisher Kellie stays ahead of the champion Taylor. Who'd have predicted that? Not me. Maybe Taylor should co-host The View. Check out Billboard by going here.

American Idol heads south to the land of previous Idols like Taylor Hicks (number 50 on Billboard and doing a slow fade out), Ruben Studdard (Ruben Who?) and Bo (at least I did better than Justin and Diana) Bice. So why are we here? We are here to witness what the outtakes and intakes the producers and video editors could splice together to give us an hour of entertainment you won’t find anywhere else. Yeah, Ahem.

But I will say that this was much better than last Wednesday when we had to put up with two hours of this silliness. Tonight and tomorrow night both are only an hour, so we do give a prayer of thanks as we bow our heads. As for talent, I didn’t see anything that overwhelmed me with emotion tonight and thought that some of the ones they sent through to Hollywood are candidates for an early exit. All except for this year’s version of the contestant from the Chicken Little School of American Idol Class Clowns. Well, we do have to have at least one of these guys every year. But maybe, just maybe, for the first time in six years it’ll turn out that the Joker is wild and he does posess a modicum of talent. Or at least enought to challenge Taylor for that number 50 spot on billboard. On top of everything else we get Kellie Pickler Version 2.3. Or is it 2.5 or 3.0? It’s hard to keep track.

Tonight’s first contestant is blonde haired Erika Skye. How do you like that name? It’s a press agent’s wet dream. Unfortunately her singing is a press agent’s nightmare as she quickly goes into a torturous rendition of Unchained Melody. I do think she sings it a bit better than The Pickle did last season because at least she is able to hit the high note. It’s way off key but it’s a high note just the same. I guess you can’t have everything. Erika is sent packing so that we can get a quick montage of contestants exiting the room shedding a few thousand tears.

Next up is another blonde. Are you beginning to sense a pattern with this show? Her name is Katie Bernard and she has a voice straight out of Looney Toons. Her voice reminds me of Didi Conn who played the hair dresser wannabe in Grease, worked in You Light Up My Life and did a stint on Benson. Of course, Didi wasn’t much of a singer because all of her singing in You Light Up My Life was done Kacey Cisyk. Since Idol hasn’t changed the rules yet, Katie Bernard is on her own. She wraps her voice somewhat around A House Is Not A Home. She does okay with it I guess but I have the feeling that this may be the only song she can sing well. After her husband comes in and says he’ll neuter Simon for Paul;a, Paula puts her through. If she makes it to the final 24, she’ll be the cartoon short subject.

We finally catch a break from our streak of streaky blondes with pageant queen Tatiana McConnico. She says she goes to a performing arts school and was born to sing. She just wouldn’t be happy doing anything else and probably neither would her stage door mother or father. Yep, she’s also one of those career singers that have been singing since the age of two and has been trained doing the same routines over and over that most of the time they end up mechanical and unable to adapt to the ever changing Idol theme weeks (Lisa Tucker?). And Tatiano, just like Lisa was, is an ex-Star Searcher. Does Idol get all of CBS’s rejects from that old show? Frankly, it’s the boring same old same old for me and nothing at all to hold my interest. At any rate, old Rat-a-tat-tat didn’t hang around Star Search very long, getting blasted by eventual runner up Molly Bouchard in her only appearance. You can visit her Star Search page here. On the other hand if they could round up Molly and eventual Star Search winner of that year, David Archuleta, and let them duke it out to see who goes on to the final twenty four, I might find that entertaining. Of course she sings okay, but it’s all the same stuff we’ve heard a million times over, and she is sent to Hollywood. The day they start rejecting these Star Search Kid Rejects who are shoved into the spotlight at the age of one by parents who want to live their life through them, then I’ll be surprised. Oh, if you want to hear more from Tatiano, go to this page and listen to her duet with this E. Walter Smith Dude. (First song on the list) I guess it's suppose to be heartwarming according to the fifty million hits I got from googling it. Then again, maybe they meant it'll give you heartburn.

This year’s Mandisa is Diana Walker and Simon, already having learned his lesson from last year, does not mention her weight nor does he talk about reinforcing the stage. Like Mandisa, Diana can sing loud, very loud, extremely loud and would probably be great at a football game if the P.A. system went out. But unlike Mandisa she can’t carry a tune in a bucket. Simon does say she is wearing the most extraordinary dress he’s ever seen in his life. I don’t know if extraordinary is the word I would use.

Bernard Williams wants to carry the Birmingham torch and become the next American Idol. He sings Michael Jackson’s Rock With You. Simon says its very good but Paula says he’s off key. Damn, I agree with Paula. Randy votes with Simon without saying much about the singing. Unless he actually sings better than his audition, don’t look for Bernie to hang around Hollywood too long unless he gets a job as a valet or something.

When I see the obvious, such as contestant Margaret Fowler, I have to wonder if they didn’t put a call in to central casting and say, “get me a fiftiish heavy set woman that we can dress up like Big Bird.” Or maybe Diana Walker went out and put a costume on to slip past the judges. Nah! It is only because of her outlandishness that Margaret is on tonight but the more outlandish, the better your chances are of getting on National Television for your five or six minutes of fame. The only way to describe Margaret is that she looks like Sylvester finally caught Tweety and had him stuffed with a Volkswagen. I guess she’s entertaining to some degree, at least to Ma and Pa Kettle sitting around their old black and white console up in the Ozarks. As for her singing, it doesn’t matter because that’s not why she is here.

Time to call in the Violins and to get out the handkerchiefs as Jamie Lynn Ward (from here on out known as Kellie Pickler Volume II) hits the stage with her sad tale of woe. She lives with her Grand-maw and her Pa-paw underneath the roller coaster at Dollywood because Pa-paw shot himself in the ear to get back at his wife who was screwing around with another guy to help take her mind off of Jamie’s singing. Or maybe where they live is in the restrooms at the Wal-mart next to the Georgia Dome. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that if she knows how to vamp Simon, Kelly Pickle Volume II is in like Flint. Volume II sings Reflections, and is just so-so at it especially when you remember how Ayla Brown really nailed the song last year in the final twenty four. Paula says she’s a bit nasally but after she promises to get a nose job they send her to Hollywoodland.

If you were a regular reader of this blog you would already know about the next contestant Chris Sligh. Chris has already had a running commentary going on for a few weeks in a forum over at Vote for the Worst, complete with pictures. This is of course a fact that I mentioned in my Idol Preview. To see the pictures of him you really don’t know what to expect. You might think we are getting this years rendition of John Stevens, Scott Savol, and Kevin Covais rolled into one. These are the guys who somehow manage to sneak into the final twelve for reasons that will always remain a mystery. It doesn’t matter how well they sing, you know they are here for a few chuckles. Chris says people tell him he looks like Jack Osborne and Chris is certainly truthful there. When I show girlfriend, Gladys Kravitz his picture, that’s exactly what she says. The good news is Chris can carry a tune and he does seem to have a dry sense of humor about himself. The bad news was at their auditions, Stevens, Savol and Covais did the old “we can sing” fake out also. So the jury will remain out on Chris for now who is sent on his way to Hollywood.

After that, Paula takes a flight back to rehab in L.A. so at least we’re given a break from her antics. Next up is Rapunzel clone, Victoria Watson. She is wearing high heels for hygienic reasons. The reason is that if she doesn’t her hair will drag along the ground getting matted and filthy. As you very well know, Samson had long hair which gave him extraordinary super powers of strength. It could be that Victoria’s hair gives her super vocal ability. I think she has an okay voice, at least as good as some others they’ve had but there’s a lot of nervousness in it which doesn’t bode well for a trip out west. I’m right of course as Randy and Simon give Victoria the thumbs down and she leaves to cry in her mother’s hair. Frankly I think the real reason they didn’t want to send her to Hollywood is that they didn’t want to buy her an extra plane ticket for her hair.

Lakia Hill comes on to sing and the best way to describe her singing is to quote Simon for once: “What the hell was that?” When Simon says hell you know it’s bad. Slimon says she has one of the worst voices they have heard in Birmingham. Lakia says thank you so we can segue into a montage of polite Alabamians which then segues into a promo for an upcoming spot of a not so polite contestant.

What time is it boys and girls, mommies and daddies and papaws and mamaws? You guessed it, it’s violins and handkerchief time as Nichole Gatzman takes the stage. All Nichole wants to do is sing her little heart out and when she tells us the sad story of her mama saying she didn’t know how to sing, there isn’t a dry eye in the house. Or at least there isn’t a dry eye on Nichole. For the most part though she manages to downplay it and gets through Something To Talk About. I think she does okay with it, and it’s a whole lot better than The Pickle’s take on the song last year. But Randy and Simon tell her that she needs more experience and she sings through her nose. If that’s true, then The Pickle must have been singing the same song through her ass.

Last and very least is Brandy Patterson. This is one of those contestants whose stick is so stagy it’s almost as if they are doing it from a script. The dead giveaway here is that Brandy is going to do Like A Virgin which I don’t think has ever been on this show in any serious vain. In other words she plays the overbearing, smart ass contestant who gets a belligerent when she’s turned down. And when these segments come at the end of the show, they seem to go on for eternity. But this article won’t because on that note, I’ll say goodnight.